


Let Me Be Your Wings

by imaginary_golux



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [15]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Thumbelina Fusion, Badass Rey, F/M, Fluff, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 19:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11042598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Once upon a time, an old man begged the Force for a child, and his plea was answered: a daughter, no taller than his thumb, fierce and beautiful and brave. This is her story.Beta by my Best of all Beloved, the ever-wonderful Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	Let Me Be Your Wings

Once upon a time, a very long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was an old man who wanted nothing more than a child of his own. For many years he dreamed of this, until at last one night he knelt down and prayed to the Force, which had always been kind to him, saying, “Give me a child - even so small a child as the very end of my thumb! - and I shall be contented forever.”

The next day he woke to see that during the night a flower had grown beneath his window, so tall that its bud rested even on the windowsill; and as he watched, the flower opened in the morning sun, and there revealed upon its center sat a little girl, no longer than the very tip of his thumb.

The old man named the girl Rey, for the ray of sunshine which had revealed her to him, and he took her gladly into his house and raised her as his own. She was a bright child, inquisitive and clever and strong-willed, and he doted upon her; but she never grew any taller than his thumb, and so perforce he made her a bed of a walnut-shell and a swimming-pool of a soup bowl, and fashioned clothing for her from the tiniest scraps of satin and silk and soft linen. So they were very happy together for many years.

At last, though, Rey grew old enough to wish to see the world, and she begged her father to let her go and experience all the things of which he had told her; and so, though he feared greatly for her, he gave her a little bag of food and a sharp-ended staff as tall as she was, and sent her out into the world.

So Rey traveled through a forest of grass and a looming thicket of bushes, and over tumbled mountains of gravel, until at last she came to the side of a broad stream, and there sat down to eat. But even as she was unwrapping her food, a great toad came leaping out of the underbrush and swept her up in one clammy paw, and though she struggled mightily, it leapt out onto a lilypad in a calm eddy of the stream, and there deposited her.

“You will make a perfect consort for my son, Kylo Ren, the leader of all the toads in this land!” the toad croaked, and leapt away again, leaving Rey upon the lilypad. But Rey had no desire to become the consort of a toad - even a very mighty one - and so she took up her sharp-ended staff and began to cut free the center of the lilypad, so that it would no longer be connected to its stalk; and after a long and weary time, the lilypad came free from its stalk and floated away down the stream, with Rey upon it.

The day had grown late as she worked, and even as the lilypad began to drift she came at last to the end of her strength; and so she curled up upon the lilypad and slept through the night as it traveled down the stream. In the morning, when Rey woke, she found that the lilypad had come to rest at a bend in the stream, and disembarked from her ungainly craft onto a wide plain, full of wheat that stretched up nearly into the sky, with beetles large enough for her to ride lumbering among the stalks, and crickets stridulating from far above her head.

So for many days Rey explored the field of wheat, learning to climb the stalks and leap from leaf to leaf as lightly as the crickets, and to ride the docile beetles, and to fight off the larger insects and the birds which thought she might be good to eat; and she grew lean and strong and agile, until there was no danger in the wheat-field that she could not master, and no trick of finding food and shelter which she did not know. But her greatest pleasure was to climb to the tip of a stalk of wheat and watch the birds swoop and play in the air above her, and often she dreamed of somehow joining them, and being chained no longer to the earth.

At length, though, the long days of summer turned to autumn, and the owners of the wheat-field came to thresh it; and Rey fled before them, with the mice and insects and birds which had spent the summer so pleasantly among the stalks, until at length she came to the burrow of a particularly stern and sensible mouse, who agreed to allow Rey to stay with her for the winter, if Rey would take an equal part in the chores needed to keep them alive. This Rey agreed to gladly, and so she and the mouse labored long and hard to gather berries and grain to tide them through the winter, and Rey won the mouse’s admiration by her hard work and her cleverness, until the mouse grew to think of Rey very much as her own daughter, and taught her everything she knew.

Then at last the snow began to fall, and Rey and the mouse - whose name was Phasma - retreated into the burrow and there took up the many small chores which are necessary to surviving the winter. So Rey taught herself to sew with a little thorn, and mended her much-abused clothing, and learned also to cook and clean and tend the burrow marvelously, so that the mouse said to her, “You are a very good companion, though you have no proper tail.” Rey did not like to think of having a tail, for though she liked the mouse very well, she did not care to be a mouse herself, but she thanked the mouse politely nonetheless.

As the winter wore on, one snowy day the wall of the burrow began to shake, and Rey snatched up her sharp staff; but it was no enemy who entered, but a mole who the mouse greeted as an old friend. “This is Hux, who lives deep beneath the roots of our tree,” she told Rey, “and comes to spend time with me each winter, that we shall not become lonely in the long cold days.”

Now Hux was a very prim and proper mole, and as cold as the winter wind outside the burrow, and he was very pleased, as the days went by, to find that Rey was as good a housekeeper as could ever be desired, clever and industrious and strong. She worked willingly even to assist him in making the walls of the tunnel between his deep home and the mouse’s burrow smooth and well-braced, and it was in the process of this labor that she discovered a swallow fallen down into the tunnel from a hole where a tree-root had shifted and let the earth fall away.

“Oh,” Rey said, “poor fellow, to have died here, so far from the sky!”

But the mole Hux snorted, and said that swallows were very foolish creatures, and shoved the body to one side, saying that it was good for nothing but burying. Rey’s soft heart hurt her at the thought of burying the swallow in the dark earth so far from the blue sky, but she drew it off into a little side-chamber she had dug, and spread her own cloak over it, and late that night she crept out to weep over it. But as she wept, the swallow moved a little, and woke from its stupor, and found itself covered with a cloak beneath the earth.

“Ah!” it said. “Alas! I waited too long to journey south, and see, I have been buried alive for my folly.”

“You are not buried alive,” Rey said. “See, there is a way out into the snow.”

“Ah,” said the swallow, craning its head until it could see the hole in the tunnel, “so there is, kind maiden.” Then it got to its feet and stretched its wings and sighed, sitting down again. “But I am cold and weary and hungry, and I do not think I could make it to the far southern lands where it is warm and lovely through the winter. Still, I thank you for my life, kind maiden.”

“I will bring you grain and water,” Rey said. “Stay here in this chamber, and the mole and the mouse will not find you, for the mole Hux is quite blind and will not turn aside from his path, and the mouse Phasma does not venture this far from her burrow. Then when you are strong again, you can escape this tunnel easily.”

“My thanks,” the swallow said, and bent its head and preened Rey’s hair gently. “I am called Poe; and what is your name, kind one?”

“I am Rey,” Rey said, and she brought him grain and water as she had promised, and took the blankets from her own bed and heaped them upon him, and slept herself beneath his wing each night, that they might both stay warm. And so for some days she tended the swallow, and they became fast friends, for the swallow told her of the far lands he had traveled to, and the beautiful sights he had seen, and Rey told him of her own dreams of flying and of her adventures in the world.

The swallow was very nearly strong enough to fly again when Rey came to the little chamber in tears, and explained that the mole Hux had proposed that as she was such a good housekeeper and so dutiful, she should marry him and keep his deep tunnels for him for always, and the mouse Phasma thought this a fine match, as the mole Hux was quite wealthy and never lacked for food. But Rey could not bear the thought of going down into the deep tunnels and never seeing the blue sky again, or climbing to the tip of a stalk of wheat and feeling the wind in her hair, or leaping from leaf to leaf with wild abandon.

“Yet I cannot leave Phasma’s burrow safely in midwinter,” Rey said sadly, “and Phasma will not hear of anything but that I should marry Hux; I do not know what to do.”

“Do not weep,” Poe said, and preened her hair until she smiled again, and wrapped his wing around her. “You are not meant for the mole any more than you were meant for the toad. Now listen; I have been strong enough to fly for several days now, and have not left because I enjoyed your company too much, and did not wish to leave you in this dark place alone. But now that I know that you wish to leave as well, come, get upon my back, and we shall fly away together, to a warm place in the south where I think you will be very happy.”

Then Rey took her sharp staff and her cloak and a little bag of grain and berries, and left her blankets folded neatly in her bedroom in the mouse’s burrow, and climbed upon the swallow’s broad back, clinging to its feathers, and the swallow hopped out of the dark tunnel and up into the snow, and spread its wings, and they lifted together from the earth.

Rey was overjoyed to find herself flying at last, and whooped with glee as the swallow soared over the forest and the wheat-field and the snowy lands beyond. When Poe could fly no farther, he found a safe place to roost, and Rey shared the grain and berries she had brought, and they slept huddled together for warmth; and every day they flew further south, until at last the snow vanished entirely, and the air grew warm again, and there were many insects for Poe to eat, and berries for Rey; but always Poe insisted that they were not yet at their destination, and Rey was in no wise reluctant to continue, for she loved flying and did not wish to leave her friend.

At last Poe came to rest one afternoon in a field of flowers so lovely that Rey gasped in delight at the sight, and told Rey, “Now we have come to our proper destination; do you like of it?”

“It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen,” Rey admitted.

“Ah, but there is more,” Poe said, preening her hair and laughing. “For I have a great good friend who lives here, and I think you will like to meet him and his people.”

And then from behind one of the lovely flowers there stepped a man just as small as Rey, and just as perfectly formed, but from his shoulders sprouted wings like a dragonfly’s, shimmering in the sunlight; and his skin was as dark as the warm earth, and his eyes as bright as the sun, and he bowed to Rey and offered his hand.

“Welcome, stranger,” he said, and his voice was as lovely as the rest of him, “to the land of the flower fairies; any friend of Poe’s is surely a friend of ours.”

Then Rey took his hand in wonder, and he led her through the flowers to the clearing where the king and queen of the flower fairies held court, and Rey told her whole tale, from her birth to the long flight with Poe. Then the king and queen of the flower fairies rejoiced, and the queen said, “Sometimes it happens that one of our people is born far from our lands, and always it is a cause for great celebration when that one comes at last to this peaceful place; be welcome among us.” Then she commanded that Rey be given the nectar of a certain flower which grew only in that land; and when Rey had drunk of it, immediately from her shoulders sprouted wings as beautiful as any other fairy’s.

Then the young man who had greeted her first, who was the prince of the flower fairies, offered to teach her to use her new wings, and Rey accepted his aid gladly; and very soon she had learned to fly as swiftly and as agilely as she had ever dreamed. And also she had found in the prince of the flower fairies, whose name was Finn, the most pleasant companion she had ever desired, clever and earnest and kind and noble. So when, after many days, the prince asked her very hopefully if she would consent to marry him, saying that he loved her dearly and would always endeavor to make her happy, Rey was very glad to give her agreement, for she had grown to love him as dearly as her own breath.

So Rey was married, with the swallow Poe for her escort, to her own dear prince. And when the winter was over, she wrote a letter to her father, and Poe bore it north, so that that good man knew at last that his flower-born daughter had found her people, and her place, and her own true love. So he was very joyful, and made Poe very welcome, and for the rest of his days Poe bore him word of Rey’s happiness every spring.

And as for Rey and Finn, they became the rulers of the flower fairies when Finn’s parents went at last to their rest, and so far as I know, they are ruling there still, in love and peace and perfect joy.

**Author's Note:**

> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr - drop on by!


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